Overview
If your website is not ADA compliant, the biggest real risk is a demand letter or a lawsuit from a plaintiff’s law firm. Beyond that, you can lose customers who simply cannot use your site, take a hit to your reputation, and end up fixing the same problems anyway, just later and under more pressure. None of this is theoretical. It is the normal outcome for stores that never checked.
If you are not sure the law applies to your store at all, start with do online stores legally need ADA compliance. If you already know it applies and want the full legal picture, see the ADA compliance requirements pillar guide.
What actually happens
A demand letter or lawsuit arrives first. This is usually the first sign anything is wrong. A law firm representing a disabled visitor claims your site could not be used with a screen reader, keyboard navigation, or other assistive tech. Some firms send a letter offering to settle quietly. Others file directly in federal court. Either way, the full sequence from there is mapped out in the ADA lawsuit timeline.
You pay to settle it. Almost no ADA website case goes to trial. Settlements typically run from a few thousand dollars into the tens of thousands, plus attorney fees, on top of whatever it costs to actually fix the site. The specific numbers are broken down in ADA lawsuit settlement amounts.
Civil penalties are possible, but rare for small stores. Government enforcement actions can carry penalties up to $75,000 for a first violation and $150,000 for repeat violations. This level mostly applies to DOJ enforcement, not the everyday lawsuits most ecommerce stores face, but it shows how seriously the law treats repeat non-compliance.
You lose customers who simply cannot use your site. A shopper using a screen reader or keyboard navigation who hits a broken checkout does not file a complaint. They leave and buy from a competitor. This is quiet, permanent revenue loss that never shows up as a legal consequence, but it is one.
You fix it anyway, just later and more expensively. Every path through this ends the same way: the site gets remediated. The only choice you actually have is whether that happens on your own schedule, or on a court-ordered deadline with re-audits attached. Shopify stores specifically are a common target, covered in Shopify ADA lawsuits.
Example
A mid-sized apparel store had never looked at accessibility. A demand letter arrived in January, citing a checkout form with no labels and product images with no alt text. The owner brought in a lawyer, who ordered an audit the same week. The audit found 19 issues. Because remediation started immediately, the case settled in April for $12,000, with a 12-month deadline to reach WCAG 2.1 AA and one follow-up verification audit. The store could have found and fixed the same 19 issues for a fraction of that cost before the letter ever arrived.
Common mistake
Installing an accessibility overlay widget and assuming the risk is handled. Widgets adjust the page with a script, they do not fix the underlying code, and they do not satisfy WCAG. A large share of recent ADA lawsuits have specifically targeted sites that already had one installed. The full explanation is in overlay widgets don’t make you compliant, and the audit-versus-widget comparison is in manual audit vs accessibility widgets.
What to do next
Start with the 10-minute self-check to see where you stand. If it turns up real issues, or you want documented proof of compliance rather than a guess, a real audit is the next step. Either one is cheaper than a demand letter.